U.S. Pat. No. 3,507,730 discloses a process of making an automobile headliner with a foamed resin facing. Glass wool is molded in one molding press and a foamed resin facing is adhered to the molded glass wool in a second molding press. Fabric with a foam backing is also used as a facing for molded glass wool headliner bodies.
A finished headliner must have a flawless appearance to be acceptable. A persistent problem has been that frequently the molded glass wool body of a headliner had wrinkles or fissures on a front surface which is the surface to which the facing is attached. These wrinkles or fissures might even be substantially invisible on the bare molded wool, and yet, as incredible as it may seem, they will show up as flaws in the appearance of the facing after the facing is applied, even when the facing is a foam-backed fabric. The finished headliner then has to be scrapped. Blind people, with their highly developed sense of touch, have been employed to sort out and scrap molded glass wool bodies with wrinkles, before application of the facing thereto. This saves facing material and the labor of applying it, but fails to overcome the waste occasioned by the required scrapping of the molded glass wool bodies with wrinkles and the expense of the employees hired to sort.